Squenix Announces the "Winter of RPGs" Event in North America

[Wolf Kanno]

Squenix has decided some of us poor schmucks deserve to have a bone occasionally and have finally decided to release some famous triple AAA RPG titles on PSN. Namely: Final Fantasy V, Final Fantasy VI, and Chrono Cross which have all been absent from the PSN store for ages compared to Japan.

Here's the full article. (http://blog.us.playstation.com/2011/11/03/announcing-square-enixs-winter-of-rpgs-campaign/)

The FF titles will most likely be based off the Anthologies version, which means that Chrono Cross will be the greater buy here cause it doesn't suffer from a horrendous translation/localization, or awful loading times like the Anthology games do.

[Flying Arrow]

Three of Squaresoft's best games. Any fans of old school PS1 and SNES RPGs should be in heaven. Although V and VI will be the crap-ish FFA versions I still recommend them. A meh port of a good game still makes for a good game.

[Del Murder]

This is cool and all, but after playing so many versions of these games it's hard to get excited about ports of old versions. But I guess it's cool for those who have never experienced these awesome games.

[Bolivar]

While FFVI is abysmal for its load times, FFV was really solid to me, although I now Wolf would disagree about the translation, which hopefully he can elaborate on for us here. But I am very excited about Chrono Cross since I just beat Xenogears and I heard the same team did CC. And of course, it being loosely connected to Chrono Trigger is a reason to play it as well.

PSOne Classics is becoming a great stop for RPGs, I'm probably gonna get Arc the Lad before either of these.

[Mirage]

I never really liked the anthology version of FF5 either. However, the games being on a HDD might lower load times to something that's resembling acceptable.

But really, FF5 isn't what I'd call an AAA game.

[Roogle]

This is cool and all, but after playing so many versions of these games it's hard to get excited about ports of old versions. But I guess it's cool for those who have never experienced these awesome games.

My main issue is that these games can be experienced by anyone with a computer. They offer very little aside from giving people a legitimate way of playing the game, so, I agree with your assessment. I regularly replay older games on emulators and simply skip the time of having to deal with imperfect ports.

[Bolivar]

I never really liked the anthology version of FF5 either. However, the games being on a HDD might lower load times to something that's resembling acceptable.

But really, FF5 isn't what I'd call an AAA game.

Unfortunately when Chrono Trigger came out on PSN the horrible load times were still there. Apparently they were "hard-coded" into the file so there's no way around it, even if you're playing on HDD.

And it doesn't get much more AAA than FFV, btw :)

Anyway I think if they really wanted to make this the winter of RPGs they would release Dragon Warrior VII, for real that game goes for $80-150 on ebay, help us out here Square!!!

[Rostum]

I'm excited for Chrono Cross. I love that game - despite the mass character cast that can impede on story, I still find the main characters and all stories/dialogue to be incredibly endearing and overall a joyful experience. It also has a beautiful soundtrack and really beautiful art/world.

I hope they release it for EU/AUS PSN, especially since we never got an official release for PAL regions.

[Roogle]

Unfortunately when Chrono Trigger came out on PSN the horrible load times were still there. Apparently they were "hard-coded" into the file so there's no way around it, even if you're playing on HDD.

If that is the case, then there is literally no reason to play Chrono Trigger on the Playstation Network if you have a working computer. I really wish they would pay more attention to ports like this instead of pushing around inferior ports like Final Fantasy IV for Gameboy Advance or Chrono Trigger for Playstation.

[Rostum]

If that is the case, then there is literally no reason to play Chrono Trigger on the Playstation Network if you have a working computer. I really wish they would pay more attention to ports like this instead of pushing around inferior ports like Final Fantasy IV for Gameboy Advance or Chrono Trigger for Playstation.

Well in all fairness, they did a really awesome job with Chrono Trigger for the DS.

[Bolivar]

If that is the case, then there is literally no reason to play Chrono Trigger on the Playstation Network if you have a working computer. I really wish they would pay more attention to ports like this instead of pushing around inferior ports like Final Fantasy IV for Gameboy Advance or Chrono Trigger for Playstation.

Pretty much... the worst part about it is you know there's some people out there who enjoy JRPGs, but aren't fanatical enough to be forum-goers, and are going to end up downloading it with Sony's horrible emulation on PS3 and these load times to boot. Lucky for them they won't be out too much money, but they probably won't give some of the other stuff on PSOne Classics a try, which is a shame because there's a lot of good stuff on there, bad ports aside.

[Roogle]

Well in all fairness, they did a really awesome job with Chrono Trigger for the DS.

Are you saying that they did a good job with it technically or all around? I remember reading a few negative impressions on the extra dungeon and the extra ending. I mean, I am sure that the overall impression is positive simply because its only other port was done poorly.

[Wolf Kanno]

I would say it was all around. It has the anime cutscenes from the Chronicles version (which you can turn off), but it plays like the SNES version (no load times) what it brought was a new optional interface that uses the touch screen which was actually better than I thought it would be. It has a fun monster arena game added and some new items for the party. The two optional dungeons are weird but also pretty good in their own right and the second dungeon ends up actually explaining some of the questions that the anime extended ending from Chronicles (the one that bridges some of the gaps with Chrono Cross) created, like what happened to Magus after CT and how Porre became a military power. Seriously, its not that bad, even the visuals and audio are not drastically tampered with like the FF Advance titles. It was a really well done port, easily the best SE has done outside of the DQ titles.

[Bolivar]

Would you guys say the graphics were more of a "touching up" than an overhaul, as opposed to the FF remakes?

And what did you guys actually think about the cutscenes?

I know we're not talking about the PSN version anymore :bgl:

[Wolf Kanno]

I would agree it was more of a touch up, but that's because the DS doesn't have the same issues as the GBA did. Its why the music quality is also spot on, they were even able to use the unused tracks from the OST for the new areas.

As for the cutscenes, I think they were amusing, but I always found it annoying they didn't replace the original scene they modeled after, so you ended up effectively watching the same scene twice. Even then, I actually prefer the original 16-bit scenes over the anime cutscenes, so I tend to disable them in my playthroughs.